1961 article on teen slang

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Sep 14, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Stephen Goranson wrote:

>> On 9/14/07, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> HDAS has a "fungus among us" from ca1960, with plain old "fungus"
>>> some
>>> decades earlier.
>>
>> The earliest I've seen for "there's a fungus among us" is 1957, in
>> another teen slang article I posted here:
>> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509A&L=ADS-L&P=R43
>> [....]
>
> According to Google Books the 1940 book Reading to Others By Argus
> John
> Tresidder (Scott, Foresman and Company) p. 415 includes the words:
> ... angling, clanging; inger, wringer; mingler, gingham; English,
> kingly;
> dangling, winging; fungus, among us; hunger, hung her; anger,
> haranguer; ...

but this is obviously just a list of contrasts between /Ng/ and /N/
as pronunciations of written {ng}.  as such, it's not relevant to the
slang expression "fungus among us".

arnold

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